


the time for sleep is now...

by picht



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Catholic Guilt, Childhood Trauma, Communication, Dissociation, Emo Pat Gill, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Panic Attacks, Religious Guilt, Tenderness, Touch-Starved, Trauma, full list of content warnings in notes, once again references to scemo culture are abundant, touch starved pat, will add new tags later if i think of any. its 4 am lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 21:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20589662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picht/pseuds/picht
Summary: ...but it's nothing to cry about, because we'll hold each other soon.No one is soft with Pat. Not anymore; not in years. He moved to New York and he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t looking at other men in the wrong ways, and he divorced his ex, and he curled in on himselftight. And so no one is soft with him, nor tender. Not like this. Not like--not like Brian is.//the touch starved ex-catholic pat with religious based internalized homophobia and trauma that no one asked for but i wrote anyway (//_;)





	the time for sleep is now...

**Author's Note:**

> title and lyrics from the summary is from the song i will follow you into the dark by death cab for cutie cuz i made a whole ass playlist for this fic with 77 fucking songs on it and somehow THAT was the song that began playing right as i was writing the final few sentences. like WHAT???? HELLO???????????? (if you're so inclined you can listen to the playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6XNPwmUENHXQ5KY3vIFW5U) but as always its almost all scemo music cuz i'm stupid and gay)
> 
> full list of cw as follows:  
1) like pretty fucking severe internalized homophobia on pat's part. he has trauma!  
2) references to homophobic violence committed against the narrator. its the trauma!  
3) sum like...pretty negative/disturbing imagery at parts probably. once again, its the trauma  
4) theres a few references to some not so healthy feelings towards substance usage, specifically alcohol and using alcohol to cope unhealthily

No one is soft with Pat. Not anymore; not in years. He moved to New York and he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t looking at other men in the wrong ways, and he divorced his ex, and he curled in on himself _tight_. And so no one is soft with him, nor tender. Not like this. Not like--not like Brian is.

“Hey, Patrick,” He says, leaning a hip heavily on the side of Pat’s desk. The kid calls him _Patrick_, like--what? “Do you, uh. Would you wanna, I don’t know, get dinner or something?” He has this little smile on his face, like asking Pat to get dinner is the highlight of his work day, and this little lilt in his voice like some nervous kid, even though this will be their fourth date in as many weeks. Even though they’d held hands the night before when they walked to the subway together. And he’s asking Pat to have dinner, _again_, even though the night before when they’d gone to part ways and Brian had looked up hopefully and softly at Pat before stretching forward for a kiss, Pat had panicked and ran the other fucking way and then been convinced that Brian was never gonna talk to him again.

There’s an openness to Brian’s face--the type which Pat hasn’t felt in years, let alone shown willingly. Pat thinks, _Jesus, kid, right here in the open?_ Pat thinks, _God, I wanna kiss him._ Pat thinks, _this is gonna hurt real fuckin’ bad once it goes to shit._ Pat says, “Sure, Brian. What’d you have in mind?”

“Well,” Brian says. Curls his hand gracefully around the strap of his backpack, eyes flitting to the side behind his glasses. “Both of my roommates have plans for the night, so I was thinking that we could, maybe, go to my place? The only thing I know how to cook is baked chicken pasta, but I cook it, like, really well.”

Pat thinks, _is this the kind of invitation which is extended overnight?_ Pat thinks, _is he expecting kissing, or sex, or something?_ Pat thinks, _God, is he expecting to fucking talk to me about my feelings?_ Pat has realized by now, though, that the only time he’s really capable of saying no to Brian is when the alternative is to have a massive fucking breakdown, so he just says, “Oh, yeah, that sounds--nice. Give me five and then I’ll be ready to leave.”

Brian links a pinky around Pat’s the moment they walk out the doors of their office and doesn’t show any sort of external reaction when Pat freezes up initially and takes several moments to unstiffen the entire right side of his body. Pat knows that Brian notices, though, and he knows that Brian suspects something of it, because the younger man glances towards him out of the corner of his eye and says, “Thanks for letting me do this, Pat.”

“Letting you--” Pat tries to breathe through the panic fighting its way to the surface. “Letting you do what?”

“Letting me touch you like this, and letting me interact with you like this. It makes me really happy. I like you a lot, and it makes me feel really good.” Pat thinks, _letting me touch you like this._ Pat thinks, _I like you a lot, it makes me feel good._ Pat thinks, _God, I’m fucked._

Pat says, “Yeah, uh. Of course,” and then when Brian somehow continues to be able to read his audience accurately to an alarming degree and doesn’t talk for the rest of the commute to his apartment, just smiles at Pat every now and then and swings their hands back and forth like they’re school kids, Pat thinks about bashing his head against a wall. He doesn’t say anything then, though, because he doesn’t want Brian to read between the lines with that one.

It’s not that Pat, like, doesn’t want to kiss Brian. It’s not that Pat doesn’t want to walk hand in hand with Brian to his train every day after work, tuck a stray hair behind his ear, lean in, and _kiss_ him.

It’s just that Pat had spent the first sixteen years of him life really, actually kind of into the whole Catholic thing. Then 2004 had hit and a boy in his senior year who sometimes looked at him funny got him high for the first time, and took him on backroad drives going fifteen over the speed limit while they listened to Bert McCracken scream about getting fucked in the ass in a hidden track, and let him borrow his old pair of boots when he’d lied to his parents about going with a friend to church camp for a week so they could go to the Warped date four hours away to see a whole lineup of bands his parents would have killed him for listening to had they known. And then the boy kissed him behind the church one day, and then the boy helped the rest of the kids in Pat’s bible study beat the shit out of Pat when they’d gotten caught, and then Pat’s parents had found out and told him they understood being confused at his age and that they wanted him to start helping out at the church more in order to have something to distract himself with, and then--

And then Pat had gone to college and met a nice girl and married her and pretended like he didn’t have an ache in his chest any time he saw a certain type of guy. Any time he saw a guy like _Brian._

So, no, Pat definitely wants to kiss Brian, and do other things with him, too. But Pat had been raised to believe that touching another person had to have meaning, that you had to have a good reason to give out your touch, that it had to be special. And Pat had been raised to believe that he should not and cannot prioritize his affection for other men, or want to touch other men in any significant way in the first place. And maybe he’d sort of stopped buying into the whole church thing once he hit Junior year of high school, but you can’t be subjected to conditioning like that for sixteen years and not expect it to leave lasting marks on you.

How is Pat meant to justify allowing himself to touch Brian in any real way when some dirty, horrid part of him still believes that it’s wrong for him to even think about? If any sort of affectionate touch is meant to come from a place of real intent and meaning, but one is told for years that any sort of real intent and meaning they may have behind a touch is bad when it involves someone of the same gender, how is one meant to ever allow themselves to touch such a person without feeling such overwhelming guilt that they think they may break apart from it?

The thing is, Brian doesn’t seem to have this problem. Brian was raised Methodist--Pat knows he doesn’t go to church, but he also knows that Brian does, in some capacity, still genuinely believe in God. And the God he believes in seems to tell him that he can touch anyone he wants in any way he wants so long as they want to touch him back. So the first time Brian had strolled up to Pat in the office, laid a fine boned hand upon his shoulder without even seeming to think about what it meant, and asked if he was up for drinks or some sort of meal after work, Pat had been so bewildered by it that after agreeing to getting pizza, he’d had to go to the single stall bathroom down the hall from the main conference room, crouch down, and place his head between his knees for a bit. If Pat had wanted to touch Brian in the same way--hand resting nonchalantly over his clothed shoulder--he would have had to have worked himself up to it for weeks. Brian had been at the office for just a few months, at that point, and Pat had observed him being openly physical with everyone, giving and receiving touches of all sorts in tandem. So Pat had felt safe in the assumption that Brian had only needed to think about what he was about to do for a moment before doing it.

Brian doesn’t have this problem--this _I can’t touch you too closely or carefully without feeling like maybe I need to take a dunk in boiling water_ problem--but he is still so understanding of Pat’s obvious boundaries, even without Pat being able to put them into words, that it makes Pat _ache_ with it.

Brian, who speaks fondly of his old youth pastor back in Maryland, doesn’t have this problem. Brian, who doesn’t have this problem, but who still walks with Pat to the subway every day after work and holds his hand the whole way except for when they walk down the block stuffed with cathedral after cathedral, not even sparing a questioning glance when Pat drops his hand like it burns. Brian, whom Pat wants to kiss _so_. Brian, whom Pat does not kiss.

When they sit down on the same side of Brian’s rickety old kitchen table close enough that their elbows are bumping, the air feels charged with something--longing, maybe, some part of Pat thinks unbidden. But he shuts that part up because it’s stupid and he hasn’t drunk enough of the boxed red wine yet to examine his own inner workings so closely.

They eat in silence for a bit. Pat can tell that Brian is leaning into something happening tonight. Some sort of conversation. It’s just that he kind of feels like he would rather die than have the conversation, so he keeps quiet on any deeper topics, sticking to Dark Souls and work and his ongoing effort to educate Brian on the entire illicit history between Bert McCracken and Gerard Way.

Brian makes a few different attempts at baiting Pat, and he evades all of them. Eventually, several glasses of wine deep, Brian gets up from the table for a moment to rinse his bowl and put it in the dishwasher. When he walks up behind Pat, he lays a hand across Pat’s shoulder, who jumps at the unexpected touch for just a moment. Brian notices, though. Brian always notices.

“Pat--” Brian starts to say, and Pat recognizes _that_ tone. The last person to use it on him had been Legs, and that had resulted in him drunkenly sobbing at three in the morning, curled in on himself in the corner of her bed while she sat across from him. Pat absolutely cannot have a repeat of such a situation--not with _Brian_. So he does what he’s good at; downs the rest of his glass of wine, stands up from his seat (working extra hard in order to not show exactly how drunk he is), turns around, and pulls Brian into a kiss.

It’s wet, a little, and sloppy as hell because they’re both gas-station-boxed-wine drunk, and Brian fights it for just a moment, but when Pat anchors his hand into the hair at the nape of the younger man’s neck, he just sighs into the kiss instead. He brings a hand up to cup Pat’s cheek softly, tender as can be, which Pat absolutely cannot have. He doesn’t _deserve_ to have it. Brian is so young and Pat has superiority over him and they’re _drunk_, and the way Brian strokes a thumb softly along Pat’s cheekbone and slowly backs him up so he’s perched on the table without breaking the kiss, like he doesn’t even realize that what Pat’s doing is--that what _they’re_ doing is--

Brian swipes his tongue across Pat’s bottom lip at the same time that Pat’s ass thuds against the edge of the table, and something about it does--_something_ to him, in the pit of his stomach. He feels… himself, stirring at the contact, and he knows the moment Brian feels it, too, because he hums a little into Pat’s mouth and rocks forward, just a bit, and--

The sensation is enough to bring Pat back from whatever grey space he’d been in. Without even fully realizing what he’s doing, he jolts back, scarpering up on top of the table, knocking silverware and dishes about in the process. Brian is staring at him with the widest eyes, like he’s some sort of injured animal Brian has just come across on a walking trail. Pat feels his heartbeat ricocheting. He feels his own inseam where his dick is pressed up against it. He sees, clear as day, the tell tale signs of Brian’s own stirring erection, shaped by the tight fabric of his khakis. He sees the way Brian looks like he is about to open his mouth to ask what the fuck just happened, and Pat just--

Bursts into tears.

Brian doesn’t have this problem. _Brian doesn’t have this problem._ (Brian doesn’t have this problem.)

Brian doesn’t have this problem, which Pat knows, because early on in his employment he’d gone for drinks with Pat and the rest of the gang for the first time and gotten _sloshed_, and when Simone had done the Simone Thing and brought up first times (as though that’s somehow an acceptable ice breaker for the first time getting drinks with a coworker), Brian had laughed as he’d told everyone about clumsy fumbles with another boy behind his childhood church. Pat had thought, _Oh, fuck_, and, _why is he sharing this like it’s some funny light-hearted story_, and had been ready to jump across the table and cover Brian’s mouth if he had to in order to keep the kid from sharing his damn childhood religious trauma in such a way just because he felt pressured.

But then when Brian reached the part of the story where someone had been going to get something from the utility shed and come across him and another boy in a compromising position, instead of talking about being beat up by the bigger boys in the church, and rapped by nuns the next schoolday so hard his knuckles bruised, and forced to have one on one conversations with the older parishioners about how homosexuality is a sin which God is only willing to forgive so many times before he’s doomed to Hell for good, he’d talked about him and his first boyfriend being teased about it for months after during youth group, and that had been it. That had been all of the reaction he’d gotten for being caught necking with another boy behind his church.

Brian doesn’t have this problem--this _looking directly at another man without my defenses up for longer than a few moments at a time makes me feel like I am no longer inhabiting my body_ problem--but he’s always been quite adept at picking apart everything going on in Pat’s head, and he’s somehow always seemed to know how to handle emotionally charged situations in a way Pat could never even begin to comprehend. So, despite the fact that, were Pat in Brian’s shoes he’s sure he’d feel extremely out of his depth, when Brian sees Pat, tipsy, curl in on himself on his kitchen table at eight o’clock at night and burst into tears because he got turned on from kissing his maybe-boyfriend--Despite the fact that Pat is sure he would only be able to burst into tears as well and then maybe jump out of the window, Brian simply backs up a few steps and sits on the cold kitchen tile.

Brian tucks his legs against his chest, mirroring Pat’s position from several feet away, and does nothing but watch for a bit while Pat tries desperately to get a hold of himself. Brian lets the silence rest upon them like a blanket while Pat shrugs his glasses off and rubs at his eyes, sniffling, burying his face in his hands and taking deep, shuddery, hiccupy breaths. Eventually, once Pat’s calmed himself down enough that the gross noises he’s making are at a minimum, Brian speaks.

“Patrick.” Of course it’s his full fucking name that the kid speaks, stretch of vowels coming from his mouth sounding like it’s being ripped out of him. “That was--I--” He stops. Takes a breath, which is also shuddery, and which Pat cannot handle either. If Brian starts crying too, he’s liable to just jump out the window for real. “I’m sorry, Pat. I’m really, really sorry. If I. That I. Made you feel like you, like, needed to do that. I--”

“_No_,” Pat says, horrified. His voice is the sort of scratchy that comes with unexpectedly crying your eyes out. “You didn’t--you _never_. I wanted to, to kiss you, it’s just that, I.” He can’t really think of anything else to say. _I wanted to kiss you, it’s just that being attracted to other men makes me feel so unbearably guilty, disgusting, corrupt, and I don’t know to allow myself the desire to touch you without feeling like the worst fucking person in the world, and I don’t know how to reckon that with the fact that when I do touch you you look at me and talk to me like I’m the sweetest, greatest, most important person alive, and I--_

“Pat.” Brian pulls him out of his thoughts harshly. “I said something--or, or I _did_ something--which caused you to feel the need to chug the rest of your drink and then kiss me as a tactic to not have to give a proper response, and then once I started kissing back for real, you jumped away and started _crying_. So--” He gulps. “So I’m sorry for, for whatever it was I did or said, that made you feel like you had to do that. Because you didn’t have to do that. And you don’t have to.” Brian is sniffling now. He’s _crying_. Pat is a _monster_.

“Brian, I--” Pat starts, trying to fight through the heady panic still curled around his ribcage in order to figure out how to fix this absolute mess of a situation. Brian doesn’t let him finish, though.

He continues, instead, with, “You don’t have to kiss me, if you don’t want to. I… I wanna kiss you, sure. Like, a _lot_. But we don’t have to kiss. Or, we can wait. We can wait as long as you need. I like you so much, Pat, I’m not gonna drop you just ‘cause you got some shit that you maybe need to work out.” Pat feels like he’s being ripped apart at the seams. He’s still feeling the alcohol, against all odds, but he still feels too sober to deal with this. He’s pretty sure any amount of sober which entails being conscious is too sober to deal with this.

Pat buries his head in his hands and doesn’t respond. It’s silent for long enough that Brian stands up off the floor and starts moving slowly towards Pat, hands out like he’s approaching a wild animal. Once he gets close enough to determine that Pat isn’t gonna freak out and jump on the ceiling or something, he holds a hand out silently. Pat reaches out and grasps it in his own shaky hand, and allows Brian to lead him to the bedroom.

No words are really exchanged, for the rest of the evening. They get comfortable in Brian’s bed with the lights off, Brian’s laptop between them, Invader Zim playing on Brian’s parents’ Hulu account. Pat seems to blank out for most of it. He sleeps fully clothed and Brian has the wherewithal to do the same unprompted, close enough for them to hold hands, but not so close that Pat feels like he’s going to jump out of his damn skin.

As they’re drifting off together, Pat breaks through his sleep just enough to register Brian quietly saying, “It’s okay, Pat. Whatever it is. We can talk about it when you’re ready. We can work through it together. When you’re ready.” All Pat can really feel is his toes in his socks and his fingers clasped with Brian’s, and all he can really think about is how this is gonna make it so much worse once Brian finally does get tired of him.

The first boy Pat had ever thought about kissing was Shade McCurdy in the eighth grade. He was a hippie--a _liberal_, Pat’s dad would say, scoffing. He didn’t go to church. His parents let him wear his hair how he wanted, and dress in the clothes he liked, and they really _were_ liberal, in a way which thirteen year old Pat had never encountered before.

Pat and Shade had been partners on a History project and they’d been friends for the entire month they worked on it, and then when they got their good grades back, Shade had invited Pat over to spend the night and watch horror movies in his parents’ cool hippie den. At four in the morning Pat had glanced over at the other boy and been hit with the visceral urge to lean over and kiss him. He hadn’t kissed him, of course; instead he kept his distance the rest of the night and then never spoken to Shade again once his mom picked him up the next day, but he remembered that pure, shocking desire for years after. Like it’s something he shouldn’t want, but does anyway. Like it’s something he shouldn’t need, but does anyway.

That’s how Pat feels when he looks at Brian.

Brian is sitting across from Pat in bed--back up against the headboard, arms wrapped around his knees--the morning after Pat had tried to kiss him and instead had a panic attack. As Pat explains all of this in broken, bent up words, Brian mostly just looks concerned.

Pat had woken up stupidly early out of sheer anxiety, remembered what had happened the night before, and just barely managed to crawl out of Brian’s bed, grab his phone, and make it to the restroom before calling Legs in panic. “I don’t know what the fuck to do,” He’d said, sitting fully clothed in Brian’s bathtub. Legs, the goddess, had listened, and barely complained about the early call, before simply saying, “Honestly, Pat, I think you have too much of a good thing here to let your own stupid monkey brain fuck it up for you. You need to just talk to him about it.”

Three hours later, Brian had woken up to Pat laying inches away, staring at him like he’d been somehow worried if he took his eyes off the younger man, Brian would disappear. Brian had gotten up to go to the restroom and returned with coffee in hand. Now, scraping his blunt nails at Brian’s Pokemon comforter because it’s probably the better option to scraping his own skin to shit, is Pat just talking to him about it.

“So, like. It’s just. My family was fucking insane. I mean, my parents are fine, or whatever. They love me, and I know that. I don’t even know if they’re still… like that, I haven’t spoken to them about, like, being gay or anything since the thing in Junior year. They love me based on what they know about me, and I guess that’s enough.” Pat can see the cogs turning in Brian’s head, the words forming: _that’s not enough, Pat_, or, _that doesn’t need to be enough. That shouldn’t be enough_, but Pat can’t deal with Brian saying anything to accidentally dismantle Pat from his current stream of consciousness. If Pat stops talking, he’s not sure when he’ll be able to start again, so he continues before Brian can be Brian and try to say something reassuring or sweet or comforting.

“But I just. I don’t know. I had so much shame for so long, and I still fucking do, even though I know I don’t need to. And I wanna kiss you, Brian, I really do, like _so_ fucking much. But there’s all this shit inside of me, all of these feelings and these thoughts I get, and I feel like I could burst from it, just from. Just from looking at you for too long. Let alone, like, touching you. So it’s just hard, for me, to do… those things. The, uh, kissing, and. Other things. It’s stupid, like, I’m definitely too old for this shit, but. What can you do? I’ve been reassured that when you’re gay and have religious trauma or… or whatever it is, it just Be Like That.”

There’s silence. There’s silence for--for a hot minute. Pat isn’t looking at Brian (Pat’s not sure he can ever look at Brian again after this), but he hears the younger man breathe in deep, then release the breath in a long sigh. Hears him do it again, then another time. He hears Brian say, “Pat,” but he doesn’t look up until Brian says, “You don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to, but I would like for you to.” And Pat is really bad at saying no to Brian, so he looks up.

Brian looks… sad, mostly. Angry, a little. Like he’s not sure how to fix this but he really, really wants to. “Is that… everything?” It’s _not_ everything; Pat has enough emotional baggage to fill up a six hour conversation and it’s only been, like, twenty minutes. He hasn’t even talked about 85% of his issues, probably. He shakes his head but doesn’t elaborate. Brian breathes in deep again, deliberating. “Okay. Okay. Is that everything that you’re willing to talk about right now?” Pat thinks, _Jesus, Brian, where did you even fucking come from?_ Pat doesn’t say anything, just nods this time. He’s feeling largely detached from his immediate reality.

“I’m feeling largely detached from my immediate reality,” Pat says, and it’s meant to be funny, meant to be an ice breaker, but it just makes Brian look even sadder. Whoops. “I’m, uh. I’m fine, though. Or, like. I’ll be fine.”

“You _will_ be,” Brian says suddenly, so fucking _earnest_. Jesus _Christ_. “You will be more than fine, Patrick. And I’ll be here to help you get there. I’m not gonna go anywhere just because you aren’t big on kissing or having sex right now, or ever. I once dated a girl who hated holding my hand ‘cause she said my hands were too sweaty, but that didn’t stop me from linking elbows with her as often as she’d let me!” He is _so_ much, Brian. Pat is bursting with it.

“Can I get… closer to you? Can I hold your hand? Or cuddle with you, or something? This may come as a surprise to you, but I’m a very good big spoon.” He is _so much_. Pat is _bursting with it._

They don’t spoon, but they do venture out to get snacks and then return to continue their Invader Zim marathon, this time sitting so that they’re pressed against each other from shoulder to lower thigh, Brian’s leg thrown atop Pat’s past the knee. Pat takes a selfie and Brian sneaks a cheek kiss for it, and then doesn’t point it out even though he definitely notices Pat’s thumbs trembling a bit as he types out a message before sending the picture to Allegra.

(No one is soft with Pat. Not anymore; not in years. Not like Brian is. For their fifth official date in as many weeks they get cannoli and Pat tells Brian about his ex wife because it somehow feels like a safer topic than other things he feels like Brian may want to talk about. Brian says something real stupid unthinkingly about how he can be Pat’s new wife, and his blush upon realizing he’s just implied he not only wants to marry Pat after a month of dating, but that he also specifically implied he would be Pat’s _wife_ is so sweet, face red and warm. Pat’s heart thuds, and he feels like the ground might swallow him whole, and he feels like he _wants_ the ground to swallow him whole, but Brian’s blush is so sweet, and he barely even processes that he’s leaning forward to press a kiss to Brian’s lips till after the deed is already done.

Brian tastes like chocolate and cream, and his mouth falls open as Pat pulls back, eyes wide in shock. Pat feels warm, and terrified, and ecstatic, and like he’s dying. Brian’s lips pull into the happiest smile Pat has ever seen. Pat leans in for a second kiss.)

**Author's Note:**

> once again i find myself finishing and uploading a fic at 4 am. i suppose it be like that. the used song mentioned in case anyone is curious is choke me. its in the long ass playlist i posted here it fucks its one of my fav songs by them. i recommend it a lot if you're into screamo adjacent garage punk music about unhealthy gay relationships and listening to bottom leaning verse bert mccracken scream about getting fucked in the ass
> 
> as always you can find me on tumblr @ cripplepunkdyke. come hang out there with me and my friends! we're fuckin GREMLINS :3


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